Donald Trump starred in a reality TV show called “The Apprentice” for 14 seasons. In his signature moment, he turned to some quivering subordinate and bellowed, “You’re fired!”
Today he’s headlining a new show, called “The President.” But he reprised his famous tirade in the Oval Office last week, berating Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not groveling in gratitude over U.S. aid to his beleaguered country.
Trump couldn’t actually fire the elected leader of another nation, of course, but Trump’s toadies immediately called for Zelenskyy to resign, and Trump turned the screws even tighter by blocking the military assistance Ukraine desperately needs to resist Russian invaders. Zelenskyy responded with a message that tried to patch things up, calling the meeting “regrettable,” but the scars will be slow to heal — if they heal at all.
As the disastrous meeting concluded, Trump cracked, “This is going to be great television,” a deeply revealing comment. Trump is a brilliant performer and entertainer who thinks “like a TV camera” and knows what that medium craves, notes New York Times critic James Poniewozik.
“It wants conflict,” he writes. “It wants excitement. If there is something that can blow up, it should blow up. It wants a fight. It wants more.”
Trump frequently boasts that he is a “ratings magnet,” and his talent for attracting attention has served him well as an entertainer and a candidate. But here’s the problem: Performing is very different from governing.
What you say on reality TV, or even at a campaign rally, is not taken seriously. But when you are president, the most powerful person in the world, every word echoes instantly around the globe. While Trump was bragging about creating “great television,” he was threatening to destabilize the basic balance of power that has preserved the peace in Europe for almost 80 years.
Trump lectured Zelenskyy that, “You’re gambling with World War III,” when the opposite is true. It is the American president, not the Ukrainian one, who is courting a wider conflict by undermining Zelenskyy, encouraging Vladimir Putin, weakening NATO and telling dictators around the world: I am abandoning American leadership and rejecting Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of “peace through strength” that the Republican Party has embraced for generations.
Most Republicans are so enthralled, or intimidated, by Trump that they are happily tossing dirt on the grave of Reaganism, but not all of them. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had the guts to tell the truth: “I know foreign policy is not for the faint of heart, but right now, I am sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and U.S. values around the world.”
She is not exaggerating that threat. As Thomas Friedman said of Trump in The New York Times: “I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.”
Moscow could not contain its glee. The Wall Street Journal posted this headline: “Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Trump’s “rapidly changing” foreign policy “largely aligns with our vision.”
It would be a different story if Trump’s strategy had any chance of working; if appeasing revanchist dictators has ever been a successful approach. But it never has. As Franklin Roosevelt warned about Hitler in December 1940: “No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.”
Putin has demonstrated his ruthlessness many times. After seizing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he promised peace. In January 2022, his foreign minister vowed, “There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine.” A month later, Russian tanks rolled.
Trump fancies himself a kinglike “peacemaker” with a Nobel Prize in his future, but his actions run a grave risk of backfiring. “It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength,” editorialized the Journal. “Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to.”
Here’s the thing about reality TV: It’s not real. It’s a scripted, staged, manipulated, distorted view of reality. This is pro wrestling without the capes and masks. Trump’s tirade in the Oval Office might make for “great television,” but it’s dangerous policy. And no high ratings or cheering crowds or bullied boosters can change that fact.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].
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